


Powerful for a Price

by bathandbodyworks



Series: Renegades of Legend [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mutants, Alternate Universe - Superpowers, Angst, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, thats probably the most faithful I’ve been to the character, when the powers don’t work right, why did I make Bruce so emo in this, you know what - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-06-20 05:40:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15527310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bathandbodyworks/pseuds/bathandbodyworks
Summary: Born and cursed with superhuman powers, the Batfamily finds some way to make it work.Six times their powers are too much.





	1. Bruce and Dick

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s the next part of the Renegades AU. There’s a previous work in this series, but you don’t need to read that to understand this, although it’ll probably help this make a bit more sense. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!!! I had a really fun time writing this.

Bruce is sitting on the floor of his room, eyes closed. His legs are crossed, and his hands are resting on his knees. The palm of his right hand is out and open, waiting for the perfectly fit bat-shaped weapon to form in his hands. 

He thinks of sad things. He thinks of the end of Charlotte’s Web, of eaten animals, and kids crying. He opens one eye, glancing at the bat-shaped throwing star that materializes in his hands. He recently took to calling them ‘batarangs’.

The one in his hand took about a minute to form. But Bruce is curious. Can he make more? Can he make them faster? What else can he make? 

He closes his eyes again, and feels the batarang fade from existence in the palm of his hands. He sits, and he thinks. 

He thinks of the things Alfred can bake, a happy thought. 

Nothing. 

He thinks of tripping and falling, not necessarily a terrible ordeal.

A little something. 

But not much. 

He thinks of bats, swarming around his room, swallowing him in their darkness and wings. 

He feels the batarang grow. 

He thinks of dying in his sleep, and feels one gradually materialize in his hand. 

He thinks of suffering before death, and feels another one instantly materialize in his palm at the thought. He smiles, proud of himself, and feels the two batarangs fade away. 

Months of practice, and he knows now that the batarangs only appear when he’s sad or upset or distressed. They fade away when he’s happy or proud or feeling any semblance of joy. 

He keeps his eyes squeezed shut tight. So far, in the little more than a year since he’s had his powers, he’s only made batarangs. He wants to know if he can make something else. 

He tries to think of sadder things. 

He thinks of Alfred dying. 

One forms in his hand. 

He thinks of himself, dying an old man, alone, surrounded by no one that matters to him, having done absolutely nothing with his life. 

Another one. 

He thinks of flashes of pearls shooting out, of a man falling. 

He feels one stack. 

And then another one. 

And another. 

And through his closed eyes, he feels a tear force its way out. 

And then another one. 

And another. 

And the weight in his hand is too heavy, and there’s a pile of them in his hands. He shoots up from the floor, pearls and guns and blood on his mind, and the batarangs stay in shape on the floor as more materialize around the room, not just in the palm of his hands.

And suddenly there’s balls of smoke dropping from _absolutely nowhere_ and he can barely see as his room fills with smoke. And all he can hear is the clang of the metal batarangs as they smack the floor, a bloody shirt and a loud bang still circling around his mind. 

He hears footsteps, and he knows that all he has to do is just be _happy_ and all the smoke and metal will just leave him alone, but he doesn’t think he knows how anymore, not when guns and pearls and shirts and blood and earth shattering bangs are all he can think about. 

Alfred opens the door to his room, and Bruce knows he’s saying something, except he can’t hear over the bang and the fall and the clashing of metal and all the noise and junk piling around in his room.

Bruce feels a batarang materialize in his hands, and he can’t see, and he chucks it a wall and can barely hear it as the metal _thunks_ as it hits the wood of the wall. 

And then Alfred’s hands are on his back, and Bruce feels better, he really does, and there aren’t any tears anymore. Slowly, the smoke disappears and Bruce can see Alfred’s calm face beside his own, his arm hesitantly placed on his shoulder. 

The batarangs in the room slowly fade away, until there’s none left at all, and Bruce can’t make himself look Alfred in the face. 

“Master Bruce, are you alright?” The voice is calm and strong, and Bruce almost shivers. He nods his head, and isn’t surprised to hear Alfred sigh.

“How did this happen?”

Bruce feels another batarang form in his hand, and he can only shake his head. “I don’t know, Alfred.” He wipes his face, he isn’t weak. He’s strong and he doesn’t need his butler to baby him anymore. “I was trying make more of the batarangs, and then there was smoke and they were everywhere.”

Alfred slowly lowers his hand off of Bruce’s shoulder, and stands straight with his shoulders tall. “Well, I can only think of one cure for this at the moment.”

Bruce looks up at him with an almost half-smile and responds. “I think I might know what it is, Alfred.”

Alfred hums in acknowledgement. “I’m quite sure you do, Master Bruce,” Alfred says. He turns and begin his walk out of the room, and Bruce follows, fiddling with the batarang in his hands as he walks. 

He doesn’t notice it’s gone till he’s feeling okay again, finally munching on a cookie an hour later.

_____________________________

Dick’s at a gala when his hands start to shake and won’t stop. 

He runs to the bathroom, ignoring how he can already see clear liquid coating his hands, ignoring all the lectures about manners and politeness Bruce had been drilling into his head in the weeks leading up to the event. 

He can feel the pressure behind his eyes as his irises leak and fill the whites of his eyes, and he pushes his mutilated hands ( _he’s not wearing gloves, he’s not wearing gloves_ ) against the bathroom door to open it and he doesn’t stop running even when he realizes that the poison is burning the door and the burning wood is sending ashes off into the air. 

He shoves his hands under the sink, wincing as cold water pours from the automatic taps onto his hands, and his hands are still shaking and the pressure is still screaming behind his eyes. 

He can see his eyes in the mirror, and even though it’s been years since he’d first seen his iris fill his eyes, it still terrifies him to see the whites of his eyes disappear. 

But even through the shaking and the pressure, he can’t stop thinking about how disappointed Bruce is going to be. 

They’d spent weeks practicing dances, how to eat properly, which utensils to use and when, how to stand when he wasn’t talking to anyone, and memorizing names and faces. 

But most importantly, they’d spent weeks attempting to control his powers. 

The poison leaks are almost random. He’ll be getting dressed, and suddenly his hands will shake and he’ll drop the shirt he’s holding, and pressure will build behind his eyes as the blue of his iris bleeds, and the next thing he knows he’s on the ground desperately trying to understand what’s happening while parts of the carpet melt away. 

Dick calls them ‘attacks’. He’s not sure what Bruce calls them. 

The poison that he secretes almost always comes from his hands, and it’s an acid that burns straight through almost anything. Dick doesn’t know if it would be better or worse if was stuff that could make someone deathly sick, or make someone feel nonexistent pain, or make someone’s body go completely numb. 

He doesn’t think his power would be all that bad, if he could just control when the poison came out. 

He’s been wearing gloves and long sleeves when he’s around people since he was a toddler, because the poison comes out through his hands, but sometimes his arms are lightly laced in it too, and he’s terrified of accidentally hurting someone. 

Dick knows that, rationally, the acid poison can easily burn away his gloves, but for some reason, the acid moves around the gloves. He also has attacks much less often when he’s wearing gloves, for reasons neither he nor Bruce can explain. 

So he rarely takes off his gloves, for more reasons than one. 

The palms of his hands are mutilated by burns, the skin pink and raw and ugly. There’s a lot of things he doesn’t understand about his powers, and why the poison doesn’t burn him, but scars his hands, is just one of them. 

He hadn’t been able to wear gloves at the gala, the dress code for the event being strictly against it, and he’d spent most of the evening shoving his hands into his coat pockets. 

But Bruce had known about the dress code for the night, and they’d attempted to prepare before hand. 

Bruce had spent night after night trying to help Dick control the poison. Bruce makes him focus, really really hard, and one time, the poison came out the exact moment he willed it to, with minimal shaking and head pain, and Dick had been so proud of himself that night that he had hardly slept. 

They had learned that water helped stop the poison after he had an attack while taking a shower, and the water had wiped away the poison from his body. The attack had been much shorter than usual, and Dick was thankful for release. 

He had laid on the floor of the shower, having fallen down from the force of the attack, barely registering Bruce’s panicked yells as he knocked on the door, smiling as water cascaded down his face, because _was this a solution_?

It turned out it wasn’t, because the water could only limit the effects of the attack’s, not stop  
them. It also wasn’t practical to carry around water at all times, he figured. A small silver lining to the dark cloud that was what he’d been cursed with. 

Dick doesn’t get why some people can control weather, or jump a million feet in the air, or fly whenever they want. He doesn’t get why he’s stuck with a crappy power that mean he hasn’t touched anyone in years, that means he can’t go to school, or live anything close to a normal life. 

Dick feels the pressure behind his eyes fade away, and his hands finally stop shaking. He pulls his hands out of the water, wincing when he reaches for a paper towel and the acid poison burns part of it away. 

He turns his head as the door flies open and Bruce walks in, worry in his eyes. Bruce turns around, locking the door to the single bathroom. When he turns back around, he’s holding a batarang in his hand, and Dick’s heart aches for him. Bruce’s hurting, and Dick wants so, so bad to make it stop. 

But he can’t offer him a hug, or a pat on the back, because he still has poison lacing his hands, and Bruce isn’t blessed with invincibility.

Bruce reaches out the batarang towards Dick’s face, and Dick hesitantly reaches out for it, his hand hovering an inch away from it. “Dick, take this.” Dick reaches for it, following Bruce’s orders, because Batman always knows what to do, and moves his hand over the tip of the batarang, watching as it melts away. Dick glides his fingertips over the length of the batarang, watching as parts melt, and then finally, nothing happens when his hands are over the metal. 

“There you go, chum. See? No more poison.” Dick wants so, so, so bad to hug Bruce, but he can’t, he knows he can’t, because he’d never forgive himself if he hurt Bruce. 

“I’m sorry, Bruce. I’m so, so sorry.”

Bruce sighs, and Dick sees him reach out his hand before pulling it back. “It’s okay, Dick. It’s not your fault. We’re working on it.”

Dick feels a tear slide down his face, and oh, did he mention that his tears are full of poison as well? But all Dick can think about is how _he just wants to be normal_ and not be crying in a bathroom because he’s too terrified to touch anyone. 

Dick nods his head. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”


	2. Jason and Tim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it. Feel free to leave comments and/or kudos!!!

Jason still can’t believe Wayne Manor is a real place. Compared to the dingy apartment he called home? Yeah, Wayne Manor is pretty unbelievable. 

There are chandeliers in almost every room, and the kitchen, _god, the kitchen_ , it’s almost three times as big as where he used to live. He could spend days in that kitchen and still not be bored. 

But the best part is, undoubtedly, the pool. There’s one outside, and even one inside. The water is pure and clean and beautiful, and he doesn’t even need to use any extra energy to clean out the water. He’s never really been in a pool before, maybe once he was younger, but other than that, he’s never had a luxury like this. 

The pool gives him so much more water to control. Well, he always had the Gotham River before, but it was dirty and in a very public area. Not exactly the best place to start floating water around with his mind. 

Jason crouches down and lowers his hands to the surface of the pool, and closes his eyes as water cascades up his arms. He doesn’t think there will ever be a day where he doesn’t love the cool, crisp feeling of water running up his body. 

He makes the water stop in place as it just begins to touch his shoulders, and makes himself _feel_ the water. Not quite with his hands, but not quite with his mind. His eyes are closed, but he can _see_ the water in the pool, and he can feel how water lifts from the pool and forms patterns in the air. 

He can see it flowing, not just moving, and he relishes in the feeling of doing the one thing that no one else in the world can. 

He raises his hands, and pushes the water up and out in the air. He can feel the shapes he’s forming, and how he’s lifting water out of the pool as he makes more and more shapes with increasingly intricate designs. And suddenly, he can feel the pressure in the air as all of the water in the pool is forced up. 

Jason can feel water pour from his hands, adding even more water into what he’s controlling. He’s never moved this much water this length of time before, but he can’t find it in himself to care. Water is _pouring_ from his hands, and it’s almost getting too heavy to hold up. 

Jason peers open his eyes, and smiles when he realizes how high up the water is, how intricate the design is. He’s never made anything even similar to what’s in front of him. He glances down at his hands, watching in awe as more pours out. 

But the water in the air is pushing down on his hands, and they’re shaking with effort as Jason tries to hold the water up. It’s getting heavier by the second, as water shoots up into the air from his palms. 

He almost wants to call for Bruce, or maybe Alfred, but no one knows about his powers, and the chances either of them have powers as well is _so slim_ and he’s never let anyone else know, so why start now?

Jason lowers his head towards the pool, distantly award of his still shaking hands, as he hears pipes creak, before water is _bursting_ from a side of the pool, and the water he’s holding up with his mind is almost so heavy he thinks he’ll drop it, but at the same time, he somehow trusts that he won’t. 

The side of the pool starts to crack in a web-like pattern, and _oh shit,_ Jason realizes too late. He realizes he’s pulling in water, almost like a magnet, and at this rate, the walls of the pools are going to burst if he doesn’t let go. 

He’s not ready to leave Wayne Manor, and he refuses to get kicked out for breaking a fucking pool.

Jason slides his legs over the side of the pool, careful to keep the palms of his hands positioned up. He carefully drops a foot before lowering his hands and watching as the water begins to sink back down into the pool, and the water in the pipes immediately stops making the pipes creak.

His hands lower another inch as they shake, and Jason can’t keep them up any longer. The water drops from the air, and Jason gasps as water covers his body, head to toe. 

His head is under, and for a second _and he can’t fucking breathe_ before he realizes he’s okay, and he’s floating on top of the water. 

“Shit. Okay. That was a thing that just happened.”

Jason stares up at the high ceiling as he floats, not necessarily happy, but not particularly upset either. He knows the pipes are probably messed up, but there’s no way he’s letting Bruce or Alfred know about that particular fuck-up. Nope. No way. 

He doesn’t need another reason to be compared to the perfect dickhead who lived here before him. 

Jason lets his hands sink under the water, and he thinks. Not really about anything, he just thinks. 

————————-

Tim carefully positions his hands on the bars of the ladder before he begins climbing. He definitely doesn’t want to fall, mostly because his camera would break, but also because it would probably hurt. 

He hoists himself up, and soon, he’s crouching on the top of a roof as Batman’s fist sails into the side of someone’s abdomen. It’s probably a criminal, he thinks, but there’s no way he can know for certain without all of the information. He’s never been one for jumping to conclusions. 

Tim lines his camera up with his eyes, and begins snapping as many photos as he can. He wants, no _needs_ , to know as much about Batman as he possibly can. Batman’s been a mystery in Gotham for years, the lone protector of the Gotham night, and Tim desperately wants to know everything about him. Who he is. Why he does what he does. If he’ll ever stop. If he’d ever take on a partner. 

Batman can be, brutal, to say the least. Tim isn’t sure if what he does is impulsive, or so thoroughly calculated it just appears impulsive. 

Either way, Tim’s completely determined to know more. And the best way to get the information you want? Photos, easily studied and compared. Besides, he’s got a lot of long, restless nights to figure it out. 

He watches Batman swing away, leaving four men unconscious on the ground, hands and feet zip tied. Tim turns around, setting to climb down the fire ladder and return home when he hears a commotion in the alley beside the building. Tim carefully peers his head over the building, fully aware that Batman isn’t around to stop what’s going on. 

There’s a group of people, what appears to be two guys and a girl, young to mid-20’s, surrounding a couple of young teenagers, barely older than him. 

The group is rounding on the kids, pushing them back into a wall while they taunt them. Tim overhears the word money, and he really doesn’t want to get involved, he’s got no training, not like Batman, but he finds that he can’t peel his eyes off of them. 

For a moment, Tim considers calling the police on the phone in his pocket. But he doesn’t, remembering that the Gotham police are almost completely corrupt, according to his dad, and there’s almost no use in calling 911 just for a couple of cops who don’t care to show up ten minutes too late. 

One of the kids puts his hands up, and the woman grabs him by the hood of his shirt and pulls him to the ground. Tim decides then that there’s no way he can just watch this happen. He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, flexes his fingers, and climbs down the ladder as quietly as he can to avoid detection. 

He walks low to the ground behind one the guys, and carefully reaches his fingers up towards the man’s wrist. He definitely can’t fight all of them off, but he can put the guy to sleep before he even knows what’s happening to him. The teen still standing notices him, but doesn’t do anything to indicate he sees him other than the slight increase in the shaking of his hands. 

Tim reaches up, yanking the man’s sleeve before placing two fingers on the man’s wrist. The man falls back on him, already asleep, and he pushes the man into the unsuspecting woman. She stumbles, and huffs before pushing him off of her. 

Tim stands up, and puts his hands in the fighting position his friend taught him. He’s not really sure how to fight, but if they get close enough, he can put them to sleep. 

The man and woman stalk towards him, taking notice of the expensive camera around his neck. He’s breathing heavy, his heart pounding, and he moves to the left as the man reaches towards him. He tries to grab the man’s wrist, but he’s too slow. 

Tim jerks his head to the side as the woman collapses, one of the kids standing behind her is looking proud as he holds a pipe in his hand. It’s a head hit, and she’s bleeding sluggishly.

Distracted, the man grabs Tim by the collar and yanks him upwards. The man’s breath is in his face, and Tim tries to roll his head to the side, his legs flailing uselessly. 

The man drops him as the kid with the pipe swings it at him, but the man catches the pipe and pulls it from the kid’s hands. He waves it around menacingly, spouting threats. “The fuck? Do you kids want your fuckin’ heads beaten in?”

The man brings his hand up to hit the kid, and Tim sees his opportunity. He reaches out for the man’s other wrist, and watches as he collapses onto his knees, then the ground. 

Tim sighs, the fatigue from what just happened catching up to him. No way he’s walking home now, he’ll have to take a taxi, or maybe an Uber. 

The kid with the pipe pulls the other kid up and off the ground, and now that they’re huddled together, Tim can see now that they’re definitely twins. They’re looking at him with wide eyes, and Tim realizes the implications of what he’s done. 

“How- How did you do that?”

Tim slowly walks towards them. They’re still shaking, and he can’t risk being exposed. The government’s been cracking down on illegal superhumans, and he’s heard about what happened to the people the government catches. There’s no way he can let that happen to him. 

He stalks closer to them, watching as they push themselves against the wall, their eyes lighting up in fear. And Tim doesn’t stop to look at his hands as he feels a desperate, uncontrolled need to put them to sleep. He needs to make them sleep, he needs to make their eyes close and wait till they never open. 

He doesn’t know what he’ll do with them once they’re asleep, and all he knows is that he wants them to fall to the ground, their eyes closed, and maybe watch as they never open them again. 

He’s reaching out to grab one of the teens hands before the other stops him. “Wait! We won’t turn you in! Honest, just- just look.” Tim stops, his mind thrumming with an ill intent he can’t quite place, watching as the teen holds out his hands, and a plant stem sprouts from the center of his hands. “See? I can’t- I can’t do much, but we won’t turn you in. Please don’t make us pass out.”

“Please, we won’t turn you in,” the other twin chimes in, breathless. 

Tim shakes his head, and _what the hell was that?_ He’d never been one for violence in his entire life, and now he wants to put someone to sleep like he’s the witch from Sleeping Beauty? What’s gotten into him? 

Tim nods his head, clearing all thoughts of how he _basically just wanted to murder someone_ , and reminds himself to speak before it gets too awkward. “Okay. Yeah. Just- just be careful.” 

“We- We will. You too.”

“Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much.” 

Tim picks his phone from his pocket, opening up the Uber app. “You guys need a ride home?”

They look at each other before one of them shrugs. “Um, sure. Yeah. That’d- That’d be really good.”

Tim nods, happy to make a difference. He makes a mental note to call the police on the people on the ground, hoping the cops finally do something. 

“So, what are your names?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Tim’s version of his powers being too much is wanting to attack absolutely everything and put them to sleep, or maybe just murder them, he’s not really sure. Thanks for reading!!


	3. Cass and Damian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bet you’d thought you’d seen the last of this, huh.

It’s not her first night out as Orphan, but it is the darkest. Just, not in the typical sense.

She can always see the shadows. Everyday. All the time. But they don’t always talk the same. 

Some nights, they’re loud, a screaming, raging storm of words and ideas and thoughts that surround her and others, except they can’t hear it, and it’s her fight, her battle, her silent war to win. 

And she always does, will always win, because she’s in control; maybe not of the volume, or where the shadows begin and end, but she’s in charge, no matter what. 

She likes when they’re loud like that, but she also likes when they’re quiet, whispering with songs and melodies and feelings, and the darkness that surrounds her isn’t necessarily more peaceful, but it’s not quite a violent thing, never is, never will be, not while she’s in control. 

When it was her first night out, it had been quiet. Whispers and tendrils everywhere, and she had been fine with it. It was quiet, and she was used to that, and she used it when stopping her very first attempted robbery. 

But tonight, they aren’t just screaming, they’re _screeching_ at the top their non-existent lungs, and she’s pushing them back into corners and crevices, all with her mind, and it’s hard to focus on Batman when she’s busy pushing and pushing and pushing. 

_**Someone’s behind the wall, 84 degrees to the left.** _

Cass turns, and throws a batarang that she’s pulled from her utility belt, and doesn’t watch as it sails until it bounces off the wall, striking the man running towards her just hard enough to knock him out.

Batman grunts, and she turns towards him, the small smile on her face hidden by the mask that covers the entirety of her face. “Good job, Orphan.”

She gives him a thumbs up, before the screeching is covering her ears and she forces her face to remain static as Batman zip-ties the criminal before typing something into the computer imbedded in his gauntlets. 

She raises her head, tilting it to the side as the light directly above her head flickers slowly. She smothers it with the shadows, wrapping them around the lampost as they slowly travel up to the flickering bulb. 

_**The alley behind the lamppost. There’s a child crying behind a dumpster on the left wall.** _

Batman’s stil typing, and Cass silently slips into the alley, immediately spotting the dumpster. She can’t see the child yet, but the shadows guide her forward until she sees a little girl with dark brown skin and even darker hair crouched behind the dumpster, the darkness of the alley strangely juxtaposed by her light, pink shirt. 

The girl shoves herself farther into the corner of the dumpster as Cass steps forward, and she can hear sobbing now. 

**_Your suit is dark. Illuminate it to allow her a better view of you._ **

Cass listens to the shadows whispering, and allows them to spread out of the crevices of her uniform, letting the light highlight the bat-symbol on her chest. 

She sees the girls eyes scan her body, stopping to look at the symbol on her chest before flicking down onto the concrete. Cass crouches down, holding out her hand. The girl, with her knees pulled to her chest, looks at the outstretched hand before shakily placing her own in it. 

Cass gently pulls the girl to her feet, and smiles behind the mask as the shadows begin to scream behind her ears again. 

Cass ignores them, holding the girls hand as she glances behind her to see where Batman is, and if he can get the child somewhere safe. 

_**He’s on 3rd Street, heading towards Parkland Avenue. He’s chasing a mob car, and left an auditory message on your comm for you to meet him on the corner of Parkland Avenue and 12th Street.** _

Grateful for the information, Cass points to herself, and then to the girl, and says, “name?”

The girl opens her mouth, before closing it. “Are you- are you with Batman?”

Cass nods her head. 

“Okay,” the girl replies, almost solemnly. “My momma calls me Mary Anne, but most- most people call me Mary.” The girl is messing with the hem of her shirt, which Cass realizes has a large tear up the side, almost to the girl’s chest. 

“You… okay?” Cass hopes the girl understands, and she seems to. 

“Uh huh. I’m just, my brother was, and I-“ the girl cuts herself off, and Cass finds herself wondering how old this child is. 

Cass hears movement somewhere, and tightens her fingers around her belt, and releases her hand when the shadows tell her nothing. “Old? You?”

The girl wipes her eyes before responding. “I’m- I’m fourteen.”

Cass may not be an expert on child ages, but she knows the girl in front of her is in no way a teenager. 

“Lying.”

The girl steps back, turning her head as her heart rate picks up. “Is- where’s Batman?”

“How old?” Cass questions again, trying her best to seem as kind as possible. 

The girl swallows, and Cass waits patiently for an answer. “Twelve.”

Cass nods again, and holds her hand out just above her own waist. “Home. Me and you.”

“I don’t know- I don’t know where it is.” Mary wipes her eyes again, her head angled down. “That’s- thats. I don’t know.”

Cass sees tears run down Mary’s face, and she immediately starts speaking. “It’s okay. Okay. Find for you.”

The girl nods frantically, grabbing Cass’s still outstretched hand. “Okay,” she replies. “Okay.”

Cass walks with the girl hand-in-hand out of the darkened alleyway. The shadows are a little louder now, and Cass moves them away from her body. They somehow increase in volume, their unending and merciless noise following her as she walks, and Cass listens carefully to the unintelligible chaos. 

The volume increases, almost decibels in a split second, and Cass has one hand around a man’s throat as the shadows screams _**Man with a gun, directly behind you!**_

Cass shoves the man against the wall, the gun already knocked out of her assailant’s hand with her foot before she grabbed him. She feels Mary’s sweaty hand still in hers, and the girls breathing is near silent. 

Cass, letting go of Mary’s hand, punches the man in the gut as he begins laughing. He sputters, coughing and hacking as the laughing gets louder, the noise raunchy and angry. 

“Why?” Cass questions, her covered face just below the man’s own. 

“Why not!” The man yells out as he laughs, louder and louder, and Cass yanks him down as she applies pressure just below his neck. 

“No. Don’t, don’t touch,” Cass says as her voice shakes a bit, and she feels shadows creep slowly up the man’s face, and she doesn’t bother to clear them as they crawl over the man’s eyes and shadow his pupils, blocking the light he uses _so, so_ vainly.

The man starts screaming desperately, the disgusting laughter replaced by blind terror. She presses harder, and the man keeps screaming, on and on and on. She feels him shake, before he falls to the ground, unconscious and dark. 

Cass turns her head to the side as Mary drops to the ground, her hands over her eyes, breathing panicked and loud. Cass drops the shadows from all around, and the alley is so bright Cass almost feels the need to cover her own eyes with her arm. 

Mary is still on her knees, and Cass can hear her whispering something, not quite making out what it is. 

_**A prayer,**_ the shadows tell her, and Cass waits for the girl to finish before holding out her hand for Mary to grab again. 

Mary looks up, eyes red rimmed once again, and shakily grasps Cass’s. “I- how?”

Cass doesn’t respond, taking in the girl’s state. 

“Are- are you taking me home?”

Cass nods. 

“What’s- what’s your name?” Mary stutters out, a tear falling from her eyes. 

“Orphan,” Cass replies easily. 

“That’s- that’s scary. You’re- you’re so scary. Momma said Batman, she said Batman is scary. But Batman, I’ve never- I’ve never met Batman.”

Cass looks up at the sky before responding. “Home?”

“How?”

Cass smiles, even if Mary can’t see it through her mask. “Batman.”

Cass definitely sees Mary smile. 

—————————————————————-

 

Damian looks across the expanse of his room, eyes wide. There are animals everywhere, lying on top of every piece of furniture he owns. There’s a white lion yawning as it rests on his bed, a parrot nibbling at something on the top of his dresser, the tails of multiple cats peeking out from under his bed, and that doesn’t even begin to cover it. 

Damian grabs the sketchbook that all of the animals jumped out of, the pages the animals previously resided on lay blank, and Damian wonders how he let this happen. He knows he has full control of his powers. He’s better than this. He should not have let this happen. 

The only dog in the room lets out a loud series of barks, and Damian shushes him before he knows what he’s doing. “Be quiet!” Damian snaps a little too loudly. He hears thudding reverberate through the hallway of the penthouse, and knows it must be his guardian. 

He can’t say that he dislikes Richard Grayson, but he can say that there will never be a day where he is caught saying that he does, in fact, like him. 

There’s a knock on the door, and Damian whips his head around. “Dami? What’s going on?”

Damian doesn’t immediately dignify him with an answer, and he stares down the dog before responding, watching as it’s ears lower. “Nothing that concerns you.” 

“Hey, Damian, we talked about this. No more strays, okay?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Damian replies, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. 

Damian can hear the man sigh. “Can I come in?”

Grayson doesn’t say anything as he presumably waits for a reply, and Damian reaches down for a kitten lying across his foot. The kitten had been rubbing it’s head across his ankle for more than a minute, and Damian does not want it to injure itself, and he also knows that Grayson will be more likely to let him keep it if appears he’s already formed some sort of an attachment to it. 

“You may.”

The door opens, and Damian watches as Grayson’s eyes fly open. He’s quiet for a moment, something Damian finds rare outside of their time as Batman and Robin. “Okay. Not gonna lie, this is not what I was expecting.” Grayson’s eyes are trained specifically on the lion lounging on his bed, and Damian could almost laugh at the comical expression. 

“They leapt from my sketchbook. It won’t happen again,” Damian says, his eyes on the kitten in his arms. 

“Damian, you’ve got to put these back. We can’t keep them. It’s not safe, and there’s no way we can take care of all of them.”

Damian looks down at the sketchbook in one hand. Almost every page had had an animal drawing, and now they all laid completely blank. It’s destined to be a time-consuming process, and he has patrol in less than an hour. 

“I won’t be ready in time for patrol,” Damian states. 

“That’s fine. I’ll help you.”

Damian looks up at him. “How will you help? You have no ability to return these animals to their art form.” Damian eyes narrow. “And I’d rather not burn them before they are returned to the page.”

Damian would expect most people to look exasperated, or at least moderately upset, but he’s learned that Richard Grayson is not most people. He just widens the smile on his face. “I’ll help you collect them! I’ll grab a bunch of those cages we have for animals and I’ll put them in there while you start on the bigger animals. We’ll be done before you know it.”

Damian looks over at the kitten in his arms before carefully lowering it to the ground. It scampers off slowly, most likely towards the other cats in the room. “Fine,” Damian concedes. “You may help.”

Grayson smiles a bit wider, which Damian wasn’t sure was possible, and steps towards the door of the bedroom. “This’ll be fun.”

“No, it won’t. This is a task”

Grayson winks at him. “I’ll make it fun.”

“You will make this last much longer than necessary. I don’t know why you’re still here.”

“It will be. I’m determined.” Grayson walks towards the door, casually stepping over a small pig walking the length of Damian’s room. “Back in a sec!” Grayson calls out as he runs from the room. 

“Take your time,” Damian says to absolutely no one but himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope y’all enjoyed! not gonna lie, Cass’s part was so fun to write!!! If y’all want to send me some requests or let me know something, the link for my tumblr is below!!!
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bedbathandbodyworks)

**Author's Note:**

> so you know when you write something and you’re like “wow! this is good! I’m so proud of me for writing something with this level of depth and just overall quality! yes! go me!” yeah, this isn’t it. I tried, and I really really enjoy writing this, the concept of powers is just so cool to me, but I’m fully aware that this isn’t like, amazing, or anything, but I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> So thanks for reading!!! Feel free to leave comments and/or kudos. 
> 
> My tumblr is [right here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bedbathandbodyworks)


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